The Contribution of New Technologies Toward Understanding Plant–Fungus Symbioses

Abstract

Symbiotic associations between beneficial soil fungi and the roots of about 90 % of land plants, commonly known as mycorrhizae, exist in a wide range of terrestrial ecosystems. During the interaction, both the plant and the fungus benefit from the relationship. Complete genome sequences give useful information to deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the symbiotic lifestyle and several genome sequencing projects on mycorrhizal fungi have been launched. Genomic projects are currently coupled to transcriptome analysis, which represents the starting point for the post-genomic activities, in which research is focused to ascribe function to genes. The introduction of new sequencing techniques (next-generation sequencing, NGS), which produce short-read sequences in large quantity, has been accompanied by advances in bioinformatics. In this chapter we will review recent advances in plant/fungus symbiotic interactions, focusing on the recent fungal genome projects and on the NGS application in this field.